Ethics

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TWITTER FILES

Published December 19, 2022 by tindertender

Part # 7

By ShellenbergerMD

The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop

How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and before The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020

In Twitter Files #6, we saw the FBI relentlessly seek to exercise influence over Twitter, including over its content, its users, and its data.

In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.

The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him

On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden’s laptop.

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/

By Aug 2020, Mac Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had discovered evidence of criminal activity. And so he emails Rudy Giuliani, who was under FBI surveillance at the time. In early Oct, Giuliani gives it to @nypost

Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac.

Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day.

At 9:22 pm ET (6:22 PT), FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sends 10 documents to Twitter’s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter.

The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate.

And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.

Why is that? What, exactly, happened?

On Dec 2, @mtaibbi described the debate inside Twitter over its decision to censor a wholly accurate article.

Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms

First, it’s important to understand that Hunter Biden earned tens of millions of dollars in contracts with foreign businesses, including ones linked to China’s government, for which Hunter offered no real work.
Here’s an overview by investigative journalist @peterschweizer

Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on any new intel?

No, they weren’t

“Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,” admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in Nov.

Indeed, Twitter executives repeatedly reported very little Russian activity.

E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 “largely inactive” accounts “linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.” They “had little reach & low follower accounts.”

In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform

“We haven’t seen any evidence to support that claim” by @oneunderscore__ @NBC News of foreign-controlled bots.

“Our review thus far shows a small-scale domestic troll effort…”

After FBI asks about a WaPo story on alleged foreign influence in a pro-Trump tweet, Twitter’s Roth says, “The article makes a lot of insinuations… but we saw no evidence that that was the case here (and in fact, a lot of strong evidence pointing in the other direction).”

It’s not the first time that Twitter’s Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process.

Pressure had been growing:

“We have seen a sustained (If uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more info & change our API policies. They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff).”

Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren’t finding anything worth reporting.

“[W]e haven’t yet identified activity that we’d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context).”

Despite Twitter’s pushback, the FBI repeatedly requests information from Twitter that Twitter has already made clear it will not share outside of normal legal channels.

Then, in July 2020, the FBI’s Elvis Chan arranges for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections.

On August 11, 2020, the FBI’s Chan shares information with Twitter’s Roth relating to the Russian hacking organization, APT28, through the FBI’s secure, one-way communications channel, Teleporter.

In Aug, 2020, FBI’s Chan asks Twitter: does anyone there have top secret clearance?

When someone mentions Jim Baker, Chan responds, “I don’t know how I forgot him” — an odd claim, given Chan’s job is to monitor Twitter, not to mention that they worked together at the FBI.

Baker wasn’t the only senior FBI exec. involved in the Trump investigation to go to Twitter.

Dawn Burton, the former dep. chief of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the investigation of Trump, joined Twitter in 2019 as director of strategy.

The organizer was Vivian Schiller, the fmr CEO of NPR, fmr head of news at Twitter; fmr Gen. mgr of NY Times; fmr Chief Digital Officer of NBC News

Attendees included Meta/FB’s head of security policy and the top nat. sec. reporters for @nytimes @wapo and others

By mid-Sept, 2020, Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate.

They also agree to create a “virtual war room” for “all the [Internet] industry plus FBI and ODNI” [Office of the Director of National Intelligence].

Then, on Sept 15, 2020 the FBI’s Laura Dehmlow, who heads up the Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, request to give a classified briefing for Jim Baker, without any other Twitter staff, such as Yoel Roth, present.

On Oct 14, shortly after @NYPost publishes its Hunter Biden laptop story, Roth says, “it isn’t clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else,” but adds, “this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.”

In response to Roth, Baker repeatedly insists that the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked, or both, and a violation of Twitter policy. Baker does so over email, and in a Google doc, on October 14 and 15.

And yet it’s inconceivable Baker believed the Hunter Biden emails were either fake or hacked. The @nypost had included a picture of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed that the agency had taken possession of the laptop in December 2019.

At 3:38 pm that same day, October 14, Baker arranges a phone conversation with Matthew J. Perry in the Office of the General Counsel of the FBI

The influence operation persuaded Twitter execs that the Hunter Biden laptop did not come from a whistleblower.

One linked to a Hill article, based on a WaPo article, from Oct 15, which falsely suggested that Giuliani’s leak of the laptop had something to do with Russia.

There is evidence that FBI agents have warned elected officials of foreign influence with the primary goal of leaking the information to the news media. This is a political dirty trick used to create the perception of impropriety.

In 2020, the FBI gave a briefing to Senator Grassley and Johnson, claiming evidence of “Russian interference” into their investigation of Hunter Biden.

The briefing angered the Senators, who say it was done to discredit their investigation.

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/grassley_johnson_to_fbi_-_august_2020_briefing.pdf

In response to the Twitter Files revelation of high-level FBI agents at Twitter, @Jim_Jordan said, “I have concerns about whether the government was running a misinformation operation on We the People.”

https://nypost.com/2022/12/17/twitter-leadership-full-of-former-fbi-agents-linkedin-records-show/

Anyone who reads the Twitter Files, regardless of their political orientation, should share those concerns.

By ShellenbergerMD

Morals and Ethics

Published December 15, 2022 by tindertender

Sales … I could never be good at it.

People wanting to receive a great deal and an even better price. They are always told it’s possible, and often sales has to smooth ruffled feathers because the “lie” they told proved itself.

Why do people seek to mentally challenge themselves so much? Why do those selling services lie?

I know, I know…

They want to take the sale from the next guy.

But to allow oneself to become an habitual liar to gain monetarily??? Not my cup of tea. The lies don’t end till the project ends, then another begins and the same schmoozing falsehood techniques start all over.

The older I get, the longer my list of people and things to avoid inviting into my world grows.

Indigenous Wisdom

Published December 7, 2022 by tindertender

CRISPR Technology, Changing the Male

Published December 6, 2022 by tindertender

They (scientists) are changing the male, which changes humanity.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-y-chromosome-is-slowly-vanishing-a-new-sex-gene-could-be-the-future-of-men

CRISPR Technology

Published December 6, 2022 by tindertender

This is what they are doing. This is why it was so important people take the injection which did not prove to assist in preventing transmission.

The Twitter Files – Volume 1

Published December 2, 2022 by tindertender

Written by @mtaibbi

What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.

The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.

Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.

In an early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”

As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.

Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.

By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”

Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:

Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:

This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/summary?id=D000067113

The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.

Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let’s jump forward.

The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/

Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.

White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.”

This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams:

Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy: https://web.archive.org/web/20190717143909/https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hacked-materials

Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…

The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.

“They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”:

By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err.

Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”

To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”:

A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:

In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.

Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights:

Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files:

Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.”

NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it’s a “tipping point,” complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.”

Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”:

“THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE”
Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it’s “not absolute”

An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.

There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum.

The problem with the “hacked materials” ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a “whirlwind” 24-hour, company-wide mess.

It’s been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too. There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right.

Good night, everyone. Thanks to all those who picked up the phone in the last few days.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394?s=21

https://www.foxnews.com/media/elon-musk-reveals-twitter-suppressing-hunter-biden-story-2020

15 REMINDERS FROM THE ELDERS

Published November 29, 2022 by tindertender
  1. Get up with the sun to pray. Pray alone.
  2. Be tolerant of those who have lost their way. Ignorance, presumption, anger, jealousy and greed come from a lost soul. Pray for them to find guidance.
  3. Find yourself, by your own means. Do not let others make your path for you. It is your path, and only yours. Others may walk with you, but no one can make your way (or walk your path) for you.
  4. Treat guests in your home with great consideration. Serve them the best food, give them the best bed and treat them with respect and honor.
  5. Do not take what is not yours, whether from a person, a community, from the jungle or from a culture. It was not given or won. It is not yours.
  6. Respect all the things that are on this earth, be they people, plants and animals.
  7. Honor the thoughts, desires and words of all people. Never break them in, or make fun of them, or imitate them rudely. It gives each person the right to their personal expression.
  8. Never talk about others in a bad way. The negative energy you put into the universe will multiply when it returns to you.
  9. All people make mistakes. And all the mistakes can be forgiven.
  10. Bad thoughts cause illness to the mind, body and spirit. Practice optimism.
  11. Nature is not FOR us. It is PART of us. She’s part of your family in the world.
  12. Children are the seeds of our future. Sow love in your hearts and water them with wisdom and life lessons. When they grow up, just give them space to grow up.
  13. Avoid hurting the hearts of others. The poison of their suffering will return to you.
  14. Be true (transparent ) all the time. Honesty is the test of one’s will in this universe.
  15. Keep yourself balanced. Your Mental person, your Spiritual person, your Emotional person, and your Physical person: they all have the need to be strong, pure and healthy.

~Indigenous Civilization

The Ghost Dance

Published November 15, 2022 by tindertender

On this day, November 12th, 1890, an indigenous movement giving hope to the peoples in their loss and grief, was met with fear and violent suppression by the US government and it’s armed forces.

The Ghost Dance is, and was, a spiritual movement that came about in the late 1880s when conditions were in grave despair on Indian reservations with sickness, starvation and death ever present, Native Americans needed something to give them hope.

  • the Ghost Dance song:
    “The whole world is coming,
    A nation is coming, a nation is coming,
    The eagle has brought the message to the tribe, The father says so, the father says so.
    Over the whole earth they are coming,
    The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming, The crow has brought the message to the tribe, The father says so, the father says so.”
    “When the Sun died, I went up to Heaven and saw God [Creator] and all the people who had died a long time ago. God [Creator] told me to come back and tell my people they must be good and love one another, and not fight, or steal or lie. He gave me this dance to give to my people.”
    ~ Wovoka. HISTORIC AUDIO RECORDING, click on link below to hear. https://archive.org/embed/CollectedWorksOfJamesMooney

The Ghost Dance was an answer to the subjugation of Native Americans by the U.S. government. It was an attempt to revitalize traditional culture and to find a way to face increasing poverty, hunger, and disease, all representing the reservation life of the Native Americans in the late nineteenth century.
The Ghost Dance originated among the Paiute Indians around 1870. However, the tide of the movement came in 1889 with a Paiute shaman Wovoka (Jack Wilson). Wovoka had a vision during a sun eclipse in 1889.

While many European Americans were alarmed by the Ghost Dance and saw it as a militant and warlike movement, it was quite the opposite — an emergence of a peaceful resistance movement based on Indian beliefs. It was also a movement of desperation, as existing treaties had been violated and Indians in the West were forced onto reservations. For the Plains Indians, this was a period of starvation as the buffalo were slaughtered, destroying their way of life and main source of food. From an Indian point of view, Europeans were not only destroying the way of life of Indian peoples, but destroying the natural resources of the plains to an extent that would make it impossible for anyone to live there. European Americans often saw the Ghost Dance as irrational. From an Indian point of view, what was being done to them and their way of life was irrational.

James Mooney wrote a book about the Ghost Dance, hoping it would help to counter newspaper articles about it that were inaccurate and promoted prejudice toward the Indians. His research was first published as part of a report in 1890, then enlarged as a book in 1896. The press encouraged popular belief that the dance was dangerous and possibly a prelude to an Indian uprising. Mooney emphatically explained that it was peaceful. In his introduction he describes several fieldwork trips between 1890-1894 that “occupied twenty-two months, involving nearly 32,000 miles of travel, and more or less time spent with about twenty tribes.” As a participant/observer he sang and danced with the Arapaho and Cheyenne, consulted with participants in the new religion, and also took photographs. One reason for the excitement about the Ghost Dance among ethnographers at that time was that the researchers of American Indians were seeing the emergence of a new religion developing in a surprisingly short time and crossing culture and language barriers. This was an extremely rare event. The new movement spread throughout the Native camps in the West, giving Native people much needed hope.

White settlers reacted differently to the “new religion”. Some traveled to the reservations to observe the dancing, others feared the possibility of an Indian uprising. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) eventually banned the Ghost Dance, because the government believed it was a precursor to renewed Native American militancy and violent rebellion. One of the goals of the agency was to convert the Natives to Christianity. The agency did not recognize the Ghost Dance, misunderstanding and ignorance were part of the BIA decision.

Wovoka’s message clearly promoted pacifism. However, spreading rumors of Indian treachery ignited fear and panic with non natives. On November 12th, 1890, president Benjamin Harrison ordered the military to take control over Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota.

On December 29, 1890, 300 Lakota men, women and children were killed in an event that came to be known as the Massacre of Wounded Knee. What started as a peaceful movement in 1889, was brutally ended a year later by the U.S. military.

Pfizer Documents the FDA tried to have sealed until 2097

Published November 8, 2022 by tindertender

Premeditated … in all ways.

November 3rd, 65 Years Ago, Laika Was Launched In Space. No Return.

Published November 6, 2022 by tindertender

Laika, “Little Barker”, real name Kudrjavka, “curly”.

Captured on the street, in Moscow.

Half Husky and half Terrier, she was around 3 years old at the time.

Choice because good, docile and perfectly adaptable to the Sputnik 2. capsule. Equipped for life support (food and water) the mission didn’t involve return.

For Laika it was a death sentence.

The interior of the satellite was lined and the interior space was wide enough to allow Laika to lie or stand. The internal temperature was set to 15. and a refrigeration system had to protect the animal from excessive thermal surges.

On November 3rd at 2 am Sputnik 2 was launched into space.

Laika probably survived for seven hours.
But some sources claim that agony was much longer: four days.
Alone, in space.

The satellite returned to atmosphere 5 months later, April 14, 1958, after turning 2.570 laps around Earth.

It disintegrated upon return to the atmosphere.

There’s a deep guilt that all of us should feel reading what we did to Laika. Human progress has often been achieved at the expense of animals that had nothing to do with our desire for supremacy.

Many people believe this was an acceptable price for our conquests, but it seems obvious, even reading this story that was really just a trivial form of prevarication.

We had a duty to choose another path.
We still have that duty today.”

#stopanimaltesting #laikadog #neverforget